Ethics

For the past three years, New Milford residents have heard far more than they have wanted to about ethics complaints and related legal disputes.

About two dozen complaints were filed with the town's

Ethics Commission
in 2003 alone, and there has been significant fallout from that flurry of paperwork ever since.

Two fairly recent developments, however, may signify that this unhappy and unfortunate chapter in New Milford political history is drawing to a close.

First, the Ethics Commission dismissed an ethics complaint filed against then-
Board of Finance
member John Spatola.

The ethics panel had found probable cause in that case the only one of the two dozen complaints that wasn't outright dismissed or withdrawn but following the first public ethics hearing in town history, the matter was thrown out.

Second, prominent New Milford developer
Tom Pilla
withdrew his lawsuit filed 2= years earlier against two residents after they apologized for their role in an ethics complaint that Pilla claimed defamed him.

There are still some loose ends to the legal entanglements that ensued from the ethics complaints, including Spatola's request that the town reimburse him for the $171,000 he claims he spent in legal fees defending himself as a town official.

But hopefully, the worst of this lengthy, unpleasant scenario is over.

Hopefully, the abuse of the ethics process individuals using ethics complaints to go after political enemies is a thing of the past.

Hopefully, the passage of time has lowered the temperatures of personal animosity that fueled many of those ethics complaints.

The truth is that there have not been many winners in this whole ethics saga, and there have been a good number of losers.

The biggest winners, as is customary in instances like this, are the attorneys who have raked in big bucks representing clients in the ethics cases and lawsuits.

Spatola claims $171,000 in legal bills;
John Kane
, a defendant in the Pilla suit, says he spent $50,000 in attorney fees; Pilla won't say how much he spent, but it has to be in the tens of thousands of dollars; and the list goes on.

Pilla was the "winner" in the lawsuit against Kane, who was instrumental in creating the ethics complaint that led to the lawsuit, and
Andrew Ziegler

, who signed the complaint before quickly withdrawing it, since they ultimately apologized to him.

But everyone in that case suffered personally and financially and in who knows how many other ways.

The same goes for most, if not all, of those involved in the other ethics complaints, which damaged reputations, took up countless amounts of time and, in a number of cases, cost a good chunk of change.

And the town has suffered, too, while this whole mess has been dragged out over too long a period of time.

We certainly hope, however, that some lessons have been learned out of all of this.

We hope that public officials have learned regardless of the outcome of these cases that they need to pay close attention to ethical matters and to always comport themselves with the highest integrity.

We hope that those who have filed marginal, shaky or even baseless ethics complaints have learned that it is unwise and unfair and can get expensive to cast aspersions on others without solid factual evidence.

We hope that the hatred that was at the root of some of the ethics complaints and that has been a factor in a number of other uncivil acts in recent years will slowly fade away.

New Milford is a great community, with so many blessings and so much opportunity. It is time for this unfortunate era to end and for a more positive, constructive one to begin.